One Million Moms Protests American Girl Magazine for Daring to Feature an 11-Year-Old with Gay Dads
For a relatively innocuous plaything, America Girl dolls stir up some big emotions in people, especially parents. Some of those adults adore American Girl dolls as much as any 7-year-old girl. Other parents dislike the dolls for any of a thousand different reasons; maybe they think the dolls are too expensive, or they’re sad that there are no American Boy dolls, or maybe they are still mad that the Molly doll got retired. But now the famously ineffective conservative pearl-clutchers behind One Million Moms have turned their furious gaze at Samantha, Addy, Felicity, and all the others, because American Girl magazine featured a profile of a gay couple and their children in the latest issue.
American Girl magazine regularly features profiles of girls in America, and the latest issue features a story called “Forever Family,” about Amaya, an 11-year-old in Maryland who was adopted out of the foster system. Amaya’s three brothers and one of her fathers were also adopted out of the foster system, and now her dad runs a charity to help other foster kids, and Amaya and her siblings help. She’s a sweet, smart girl with pink braids in her hair, and she’s a great and inspirational person to feature in a magazine for young girls.
The article is written from Amaya’s point of view, and it’s all about her life and her work helping foster children. At the end of the article there is a photo of Amaya with her brothers and her two fathers, and that’s what set off The American Family Association and its One Million Moms.
“American Girl could have focused the article on the child and not about the parents since it is a magazine for children,” The AFA said, according to PopSugar. “The magazine also could have chosen another child to write about and remained neutral in the culture war. American Girl is attempting to desensitize our youth by featuring a family with two dads.”
Not only are these people publicly protesting American Girl, they’ve taken to harassing the Scheers with unflattering phone calls as well.
”I don’t live in a plastic bubble,” said Rob Scheer to the Washington Post. ”I am a gay man and I have four African American kids. I understand people out there are ugly. But I didn’t expect a group of moms to say we are sinners.”
”But at the same time, these are a ”˜million moms,’ they could really be helping the 364,000 kids in foster care,” Rob Scheer said. “This is our family and it works for us. And you know what? We have four amazing kids that we adopted out of foster care. These are four kids that have fulfilled our life more than we ever thought.”
That’s a pretty fierce burn on a bunch of people who say they want to help children but are really just focused on spreading hate.
No 11-year-old should have to deal with a bunch of adults telling her that her family is evil, but Amaya also had a pretty good retort.
“This is none of your business,” she said.
As for American Girl, the company is in pretty good company. One Million Moms also hates the Muppets, Ellen DeGeneres, JC Penney (for hiring Ellen), and both Marvel and DC Comics. At this point, being protested by One Million Moms should be a goal for any company.
